Verner Lehtimaki

Verner Lehtimaki (8 June 1890-5 April 1938) was a Finnish Red Guards cavalry commander during the Finnish Civil War who later assisted the British and the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. He was executed during the Great Purge in 1938.

Biography
Verner Lehtimaki was born in Vahto, Finland, Russian Empire in 1890, and he emigrated to the United States at a young age. He worked on a New Mexico ranch and on a Mississippi riverboat before moving to Russia in 1916 to work at a local Vauxhall dealer in St. Petersburg. After the February Revolution of 1917, he lost his job, and he started smuggling guns for the Finnish Red Guards during the Finnish Civil War. Lehtimaki served as a Red Guards cavalry commander at Vilppula during the war, and he fled to the Russian SFSR after the civil war ended in 1918. He served in the British-trained Murmansk Legion, but he later defected to the Bolsheviks, serving as a seaplane pilot in the Baltic Fleet. He became a Soviet citizen in 1936, but he was arrrested during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in 1938 and executed for being a "counter-revolutionary".